Newsroom

The North Atlantic Council agreed on Thursday (24 May 2018) to accept Japan’s request to designate its Embassy to Belgium as its Mission to NATO. The Ambassador of Japan to Belgium will be the Head of the Mission of Japan to NATO.

NATO Review

Will the Alliance discover navies again?
04 Apr. 2018“There is no one area in which Russia is outperforming NATO but their approach in combining technology, ways of fighting, platforms, weapons, sensors alongside an aggressive political will to act makes them challenging adversaries.” – Prof. Peter Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.

Diplomacy by other means? NATO’s science sixty years on…
26 Mar. 2018The public release of archived documents has shed new light on the wider legacy of the Alliance’s investment in science. Crucially, it reveals the importance of this sponsorship, which started exactly sixty years ago, for the advancement of science as much as for the Allies’ relations at the height of the Cold War.

Sweden and NATO – 23 years down the road
11 Jan. 2018In the face of current security challenges, Sweden is increasing defence spending, strengthening its capabilities, and deepening its cooperation with NATO and partner countries.

Beauty and the Beasts: Why terrorists target history
20 Dec. 2017Taking in interviews ranging from the head of UNESCO through to an Afghan smuggler, this documentary looks at the trail of destruction left by terrorist groups in our cultural heritage. It investigates how they both ban it but yet use it to fund their activities.

Zapad 2017 and Euro-Atlantic security
14 Dec. 2017The increasing size and complexity of Russia’s annual strategic and snap exercises, in particular the Western-oriented ZAPAD series, underscores the need for Allies to ensure full and timely implementation of the strengthened deterrence and defence measures.

Combating Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
26 Oct. 2017To mark the 17th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, two experts look at how far we have come in the fight to eradicate sexual violence in conflict and at how NATO operations can be supported to enhance these efforts.

Adapting NATO intelligence in support of ''One NATO''
08 Sep. 2017NATO stood up its new Joint Intelligence and Security Division earlier this year, headed up by Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven. He explains why this is the most significant reform in the history of Allied intelligence.

Autonomous military drones: no longer science fiction
28 Jul. 2017The possibility of life-or-death decisions someday being taken by machines not under the direct control of humans needs to be taken seriously. Three Norwegian experts take a look at advances in this technology, and at the legal and ethical issues raised.

Tackling the surge of returning foreign fighters
14 Jul. 2017Reflecting public threat perceptions, ‘hard approaches’ towards foreign fighter returnees, emphasising prosecution and long prison sentences, remain popular. But Alastair Reed and Johanna Pohl of the International Center for Counter Terrorism in The Hague argue that such approaches fail to address the entirety of the problem and need to be augmented by ‘soft’ approaches that focus on prevention and rehabilitation.

Hybrid influence – lessons from Finland
28 Jun. 2017Finland has a long history of being a small state living next to a huge and increasingly assertive neighbour, Russia. Two Finnish experts share some of the lessons Finland has learned in recent years.

NATO-Russia relations
13 Jun. 2017Radoslava Stefanova, Head of NATO’s Russia and Ukraine Relations Section, looks back with regret to the honeymoon days of NATO-Russia relations and asks what options remain in the aftermath of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and continued aggression on Ukraine.

A personal take on NATO-Russia relations
13 Jun. 2017Fifteen years after the NATO-Russia Council was established, Radoslava Stefanova, Head of NATO’s Russia and Ukraine Relations Section, looks back in disappointment at how the high hopes for the NATO-Russia partnership have been dashed.

Russian intelligence is at (political) war
12 May. 2017It would be a mistake to see the Russian security and intelligence services as analogues of those of the West. Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague stresses that ''in terms of their missions, interactions and mindsets, they are on a wartime footing.''

Sharing the burden of keeping Europe whole, free and at peace
05 May. 2017Measuring fair burden-sharing is more complicated than it seems,” says Alexander Mattelaer of the Egmont Institute. He takes a closer look at this issue, which is a hot topic of debate in the run up to the meeting of Allied leaders on 25 May in Brussels.

NATO IN FOCUS

The principle of collective defence is at the very heart of NATO’s founding treaty. It remains a unique and enduring principle that binds its members together, committing them to protect each other and setting a spirit of solidarity within the Alliance.

NATO constantly reviews and transforms its policies, capabilities and structures to ensure that it can continue to address current and future challenges to the freedom and security of its members. Presently, Allied forces are required to carry out a wide range of missions across several continents; the Alliance needs to ensure that its armed forces remain modern, deployable, and capable of sustained operations.

Many of the challenges NATO faces require cooperation with other stakeholders in the international community. Over the past 25 years, the Alliance has developed a network of regional partnership frameworks with 41 partner countries from the Euro-Atlantic area, the Mediterranean and the Gulf region, as well as individual relationships with other partners across the globe. NATO pursues dialogue and practical cooperation with these nations on a wide range of political and security-related issues. NATO’s partnerships are beneficial to all involved and contribute to improved security for the broader international community.

NATO is an active and leading contributor to peace and security on the international stage. It promotes democratic values and is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. However, if diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military capacity needed to undertake crisis-management operations, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.